GoogleTube would keep the lawyers busy

The blogosphere, with its ferocious appetite for acquisition rumors, is champing away at news reports citing unnamed sources that Google for $1.6 billion.

Opinion, not surprisingly, runs the gamut as to the likelihood of such a rumor becoming reality. To some, the move makes perfect sense. After all, it would make the search king also the ruler of the rapidly growing Internet video world. That's a title Google Video has not yet come close to earning.

Others, however, are saying Google would be a fool to take on YouTube with all its looming copyright infringement issues. The second the deep-pocketed Google takes over, media outlets from whom YouTube content is routinely pirated will be lining up with lawsuits in hand, they say.

Blog community response:

"If there is any truth to this rumor, my feeling is that Google, with its great engineering team, could eventually build all the features of YouTube and make it even better for far less money than it would take to buy it, if indeed the going price is over $1 billion."
--hitwise

"My take on this is that when Google does buy the video Web site, they are going to be faced with hundreds of millions of dollars in copyright infringement suits...Right now, YouTube is nothing, money-wise. That's why they have not been sued. But get someone to buy them with vastly deep pockets like Google, and the lawyers are going to have a field day."
--Gay Orbit

"While Google has pockets deep enough and a corporate will strong enough to do battle with a horde of intellectual property attorneys, it may not need to. Google's video-search capabilities may be just what the copyright doctor ordered, making it easier to root out and remove copyright-protected content uploaded to its servers. It may even have the resources to hire people to do this manually, if the algorithms aren't up to snuff."
--TechBlog

"I guess YouTube is using the tried and true method of making money on the Internet...cashing out. With (only) $11.6 Million in VC money, $1.6 is a nice payday."
--Don't Clog My Inbox